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Sniffing your network requires a virtual or physical prescence on your network..... I can't sniff you from here because I can't "see" your network.

If you have a network secured from the internet then I can't see the traffic passing across it..... If it isn't secure I could install a sniffer that will report all traffic to me.......

Don\'t SYN us.... We\'ll SYN you..... \"A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.\" - Thucydides

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I guess that would depend on the services you have running. I would say that yes they could sniff into your email by sniffing your username and password or catching it with a keylogger. They could also sniff onto your system I guess. If they can join your network they can at least access any shares you have. Then they could put an executable in one of your shared directories, like some sort of trojan. And if you run the executable then they will get control. I would password protect my shares and make them read only. If I were you I would turn off file sharing and get a good firewall. If you have a wireless network there are a few tutorials at AO on securing wireless networks. The best advice I can give you is be paranoid. Get all the antivirus/firewall/antispyware/antitrojan software, and update and use it.

Actual sniffing is placing a computer on a network that collects packets and does something with them. Either logs them or searches them for certain strings (like username: password to collect information. You don't actually sniff a mailbox or anything like that, but you can set up a sniffer to just watch your computers connections to your email server. But if someone was going to take the time to sniff your network, they would get more then just your email.

You do need acess to the network, and you have to be able to run the NIC in promiscius mode. This means that the network card will read all packets, not just the ones that are addressed to that network card. To set the network card to promiscius mode, you do need root/administrator access on that machine. But someone could set up their own machine on your network in a hidden location as long as they had root on that machine. They don't need admin access on the network, just 1 machine which will be set up as a sniffer. If you a running a switched network (switches, not hubs) its a lot harder to set up a sniffing box because you also need access to the switch.